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Fentanyl deaths among the young are dropping. Can the trend continue?
Justin Carlyle, age 23, photographed on the street in Kensington, a neighborhood of Philadelphia, has lived with addiction to fentanyl and other drugs for a decade. After a decade when overdoses devastated young Americans, drug deaths among people in the U.S. under age 35 are plummeting. The shift is saving thousands of young lives every year. Rachel Wisniewski/NPR hide caption
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Rachel Wisniewski/NPR
Justin Carlyle, age 23, photographed on the street in Kensington, a neighborhood of Philadelphia, has lived with addiction to fentanyl and other drugs for a decade. After a decade when overdoses devastated young Americans, drug deaths among people in the U.S. under age 35 are plummeting. The shift is saving thousands of young lives every year.
Rachel Wisniewski/NPR
Fentanyl and other street drugs killed more than 230 thousand people under the age of 35 in the U-S over the last decade.
But now new federal data shows drug deaths among young people are plummeting at an unprecedented rate - saving thousands of lives each year.
What's driving the drop, and with federal funding cuts on the horizon will it continue?
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This episode was produced by Alejandra Marquez Janse. It was edited by Andrea De Leon and Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.
